Genesis 41:25

Joseph at once admits, "It is not in me." It was no more in Joseph than in the wise men of Egypt. They may be trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. They may hold the highest posts in the king's court. Joseph, by contrast, is "a young man, a Hebrew, a slave," in a dungeon. But God is with him. So he can surpass the wisdom of the wise, stand without fear before the king, and say with full confidence, "God will give Pharaoh an answer of peace." He does not say, "God can give Pharaoh an answer," true as that would have been. Faith goes past what God can do, and states plainly what God will do.

First God reveals what He is about to do. Even so, man cannot profit by the revelation. God speaks in a vision to Pharaoh, by writing on the wall in Belshazzar's day, and by "great plainness of speech" in our day. But now, as in the days that are past, the wise men of this world are at a total loss when they try to interpret the Word of God. So Pharaoh calls on the "magicians of Egypt and all the wise men of it," only to find "there was none to interpret" his dreams. Man's natural pride in his own mind blinds him to a simple fact: only God can interpret what comes from God.

Joseph interpreted the dream for Pharaoh at once, saying, "The dreams of Pharaoh are one" — that is, the second dream simply confirmed the first. God was showing Pharaoh beforehand what He was going to do in Egypt… God does things like this to wake people up. He wants them to see that their blessing does not depend on circumstances, but on the God who brings about every circumstance.

Joseph explains that both dreams pointed to one event: seven years of plenty, followed by as many years of famine, beyond anything known before. God brought both about for extraordinary ends, and He also made it all known to Pharaoh, which lay outside the reach of man. The doubling of the dream showed not only that it was certain, but how soon it would come. God does not deceive, and He is not mocked.

No doubt the wise men of Egypt had their theories about the future of Egypt. They shaped their policies and made their plans to fit their own ideas. The leaders of this world do the same today… they have their various theories about the future government of the world… all the theories of men leave God out of God's world… Still, God has His own plans for the future government of the world, and He has not left us in the dark about them.

All through this, the Lord was with him, though he was rejected and completely forgotten, like a dead man no one remembers. It is as a rejected man that he becomes the interpreter… And here he is to interpret the whole history of the world and what would become of it: its blessing and its misery, its time of comfort and its time of trial, and the provision made for it. There is counsel here as well as knowledge — wisdom about God's mind, and not only knowledge of it.

There is precious spiritual gift in him. He was a vessel in God's house, carrying the mind of Christ, and ministering that mind as an oracle of God; like Daniel again, interpreting dreams, and making known even to kings, though still in his day of humiliation, what was coming upon the earth.